The Pleasures & Perils of the Unorthodox Interview
Interviews are regarded as necessary supplemental endeavors for celebrities within the entertainment industry. They operate as a source of publicity for whatever project they have been recently working on, or more generally an opportunity to impart information about their lives. For the sake of covering bases and making an interview accessible for a more general audience, many mainstream traditional interviews have inevitably succumbed to a uniformity and staleness that breed repetitive and unoriginal answers from the interviewee. Facilitated by the general public’s continuous pursuit to see celebrities in less traditional lights, more mainstream attention has been given to those interviewers who subvert the rigidity of normative questions and ask something different of the celebrity interviewee, often unveiling a new part of themselves in the process.
These audiovisual interviewers are often operating under an alternative persona that has evolved over the course of their show, but have been crafted to evoke humored responses from guests and audiences alike. Over the last few years, Amelia Dimoldenberg has come into prominence for her dry, sarcastic, and intentionally awkward interview style on her YouTube show Chicken Shop Date. While on a “date” with a celebrity, Dimoldenberg probes them with relationship-based and other random questions in a London fried chicken shop. The videos, and specific clips go viral on multiple social media platforms on a regular basis and are characteristically full of entertaining silences, challenges to guest responses, and short but amusing exchanges that see celebrities play into her bits. Eight years ago she started her series with a large focus on UK musicians and rappers like Ghetts, and AJ Tracey, and over time she has expanded her reach with viral interviews with Daniel Kaluuya and Jack Harlow. The reputation she has built within the entertainment industry has allowed her interview style to be known amongst celebrities and this notability has given her the opportunity to be a specialized interviewer for red carpets events–generating even more viral moments in the process.
Despite being generally liked by the public and amassing a large following for herself outside of YouTube, she and her show have been met with some critique, deconstructing if the underlying elements that make her interview stand out are potentially oblivious to their greater social context. Different from a studio or set, all of her interviews take place in UK chicken shops which have been described as a staple for the inner city working class and associated with Black and minority cultures. The dynamic of a middle-class white woman positioned in this space, and beginning her series by primarily interviewing Black UK artists has brought about general questions of privilege that interviewers within the racial minority do not have. In a 2019 BBC interview, Dimoldenberg acknowledges that, “people who aren’t white have to work harder to enter this space [in the media],” and hopes to uplift the guests who are featured. In many ways this sentiment translates past her interview persona because she is shown to be aware of her guest’s projects, backgrounds, and be genuinely engaged with what her guests are saying. In regard to her show’s environment specifically, in an interview with British Vogue she states that in creating her format for the interview-date, she was suggested to go where “you would never usually go [for a date] to make it funny.” By this logic, she was likely playing into the chicken shop’s lack of sophistication for a typical “nice” date, rather than intentionally playing up oppositional sociocultural dynamics, however it is important to acknowledge that in this environment, and with her non-white guest, this dynamic is something inherent. As her series evolved and she fell further into the mainstream awareness, she interviewed a more diverse range of guests, and the aforementioned dynamic became less representative of her show.
Nevertheless, Dimoldenberg’s name is brought up again when a new white woman with a similarly awkward, deadpan shtick, began interviewing high profile celebrities, and influencers with large followings. Bobbi Althoff is a social media personality and the host of The Really Good Podcast that premiered early this year in April. Althoff and her podcast immediately entered the mainstream when she landed an interview with Drake, just 4 months after the show’s debut and with little interview experience prior to her podcast’s creation. This has ignited speculation about the extent of her previous connections, but more significantly, people started to question the effectiveness of this type of ironic, “parody” interview when the interviewer uses the persona as justification to present as utterly disinterested and ignorant–especially when it is intensified around their non-white interviewees. In her interviews with rappers Drake, Offset, and Lil Yachty she claims not only to have no knowledge of their music, but also remains stagnant in her feigned disinterest in potentially interesting topics and the result is often unenjoyable and repetitive. This style can help facilitate light-hearted confrontation but when the questions and topics do not have any direction or prior thought (even when it is an intentional aspect of the show), you are not necessarily left wanting more.
Ziwe, host of Showtime’s talk show, Ziwe, is an example of what a parodied, humorous, and confrontational interview has the potential to be in its best moments. Focused largely on race, class, feminism, and other social issue topics, the interview questions are already outside the norm for any given celebrity interview, but Ziwe asks direct, uncomfortable questions to her guests of all demographics, and then watches as they try to give the most acceptable answer, digging themselves further and further into revealing their potential biases and lack of social awareness. Similarly to the aforementioned interviewers, silence is their friend. Ziwe revels in the awkward silence, letting her expression linger when her guest has said something vaguely ignorant or absurd. In addition to that, her show’s format employs text and images that appear on the screen to further present the irony of the situation. These supplemental edits, help to dramatize and humorize the exchange, but even without the help of editing, Ziwe’s straight-faced expressions, and unwavering commitment to making situations uncomfortable comedically shines through. This persona was also seen on her digital Youtube and Instagram talk show, Baited, where on the latter platform she would live stream with celebrities. Following a similar premise and style of interview, she would still somehow capture humor in discomfort, while at the same time navigating the liveness and virtuality that potentially obscures the intentionality of an assumed persona.
Throughout the years I have watched as the evolving digital landscape allowed interviewers the creative freedom to construct their own formats, and it has been especially interesting to see the trends in the types of interviewer personas that grow a large following. Apart from those that consistently utilize satire and parody, there are also those who have crafted their interviewer persona with unabashed sincerity and enthusiasm in their presentation of questions. For decades, John Rutskin, more widely known as Nardwaur the Human Serviette, has become a great example of an unorthodox, stylized interview with a playful persona. Adorned in his signature tartan hat and eccentric outfit, he goes about interviewing guests with a large focus on their background, artistic process, inspirations. Known for his animated style of speaking, his gifts, and his extensive music knowledge, he brings to the surface deep cut information related to the artist, fostering genuine amusement and shock that prompts them contextualize. What translates is respect for the artist and their respective genres and cultures. However, with some artists, his style does not always elicit a positive reaction, but overall with his adherence to his shtick he pulls never heard before stories and excitement out of them, and his series has become a favorite interview for entertainers and their fans.
Whether it is solely for entertainment or if there is some larger key takeaway from an artist’s answers, dynamic communication styles have the ability to dictate the substance of an interview. From watching these interviewers, I am reminded how persona and performance does not stop at the entertainer, and can be employed as a useful tool to make, what is at its core, simply a conversation, something compelling and comical.
